Facebook has announced six new Facebook Live tools and features that publishers should find helpful.
Among them: Pages can go live via browsers. You can appoint live contributors to stream on your Page’s behalf. You can highlight comments. And more!
Here are the six latest Facebook Live features and tools you need to know about.
1. Go Live From Desktops & Laptops
Facebook Pages can now go live via a web browser on their desktop or laptop computer. This will make it easier for a variety of broadcasters, especially those with daily vlogs, according to Facebook.
We’re still waiting for the full rollout of Facebook Live on desktops for everyone, which we reported in September was just starting to roll out.
2. New Role: Live Contributor
If you’re a Facebook page admin, you can now assign specific people to go live on your behalf.
Until now, only Facebook page admins were able to use Facebook Live. This was problematic if you had a large team of contributors because you had to make them page admins to allow them to broadcast live on Facebook.
But now your Live Contributors can simply start streaming live whenever something interesting or newsworthy is happening and you don’t have to unnecessarily give out Facebook page admin privileges.
3. Pin Live Comments
Want to highlight great comments for your viewers? Now you can.
Facebook has added the ability to pin comments to the bottom of your live broadcasts.
4. Video Permalinks
Facebook is adding permalinks for videos. It will use this format: facebook.com/pagename/videos. So, for example, Search Engine Journal’s permalink is https://www.facebook.com/SearchEngineJournal/videos/
Facebook said that viewers who visit the permalink for your page will be greeted with a live video if you’re currently broadcasting. Plus, they will see all your previous live and non-live videos.
5. Crossposting After Your Live Broadcast Ends
After your Facebook Live broadcast has ended, you can now publish that video to multiple pages at once. Before this update, you could only crosspost your uploaded videos to pages that had the same business manager and pages with different owners.
6. Video Insights for Profiles
Public figures (e.g., celebrities, journalists, politicians) who have 5,000 or more followers will gain access to some new metrics, for both live and uploaded videos, in the coming weeks. The Video Insights for Profiles metrics will include:
- Total minutes viewed.
- Total number of views.
- Total engagement (reactions, comments, shares).
In addition, these people will be get aggregated insights for every video they post on over 7-, 30-, and 60-day periods, including:
- Total number of video posts.
- Engagement.
- Total views.
- Minutes viewed,
- Total number of Profile followers.
Image Credit: Facebook